Cactus Heart

35

Choose a strand and pull it, follow where it led. That had been Gretchen’s advice. So on Tuesday I drove down Central into the south Phoenix barrio, across the Salt River that stayed dry despite the rain, past the brightly colored storefronts with signs in Spanish. A brave ice-cream man patrolled the corner of Southern Avenue with his pushcart, even though it was fifty degrees outside. Shops covered their wares in plastic against the rain. Working people huddled on the muddy, broken concrete of city bus stops.

Every face I saw was Hispanic, and it made me think of the kid in the old motel, Hector Gonzales. Just before Peralta arrived, when I had asked him if he had killed Yarnell, he said something odd. He said, “Yarnell, he…” I had forgotten about it in the mayhem that followed. Now I remembered it. “Yarnell, he…” He said it as if he knew whom I was talking about, and yet it wasn’t necessarily the way you’d begin a sentence of denial, or confession. “Yarnell, he…” Nothing about these cases seemed right. I was thinking too much, or so Peralta had said. So I drove on, but didn’t stop thinking.

The Phoenix I had grown up in had been little removed from its roots as a largely Southern town, and south Phoenix was the segregated wrong side of the tracks. It was a very Anglo city, with a relatively large African-American population, and Mexican-American families that had lived here for generations. All this had been swept away by the past ten or fifteen years, as hundreds of thousands of first-generation Latino migrants had crowded into a city whose population had tripled since 1960. The historic Golden Gate barrio had been bulldozed for Sky Harbor expansion. The newcomers had turned everything from the onetime white-bread suburb of Maryvale to many of the formerly black neighborhoods of south Phoenix into new barrios. Now the Midwesterners were coming, too. The citrus groves and Japanese Flower Gardens that had encircled the south edge of the city like a cooling, green necklace were falling to subdivisions, shopping strips, and gated properties. There were hard feelings and tensions on all sides.

I was after different history: a man who had been at the Yarnell hacienda the night of the kidnapping. Finding people was easier than when I had been a young patrol deputy. Now the department had a software program called AutoTrack that allowed us to search through public records using as little as a name. I had more than that, because Luis Paz’s Social Security number was still in the Yarneco records from 1941, and the Department of Motor Vehicles had issued him a driver’s license in 1988. But his old phone number had been disconnected. With AutoTrack I found he was still alive, and living with his son. I tried to keep my heart from leaping into my throat in excitement.

Luis Paz, Hayden Yarnell’s gardener, would be the only person left alive who had been an adult at the hacienda when the kidnapping took place. Although the case files showed that Paz was there that Thanksgiving night, there was no evidence he had been interviewed. Another case of lost paperwork, I was sure. But what if he had seen something that escaped the attention of young James or Max Yarnell? Maybe he could tell me what happened on the night when Jack Talbott was sleeping off a drunk, not committing a kidnapping. Or maybe Paz was in diapers with his memory gone. I had to try.

I parked the BMW in front of a single-story cinder block house on a street without curbs or gutters. Around me was a poor neighborhood hunched in the shadow of some kind of industrial operation. The air smelled of an unknown chemical. But this house was neat, freshly painted and lushly landscaped. I counted four pickup trucks in the driveway. At the door, I showed my star and asked for Luis Paz.

“He’s not here. Who the hell are you?”

A big man around my age pushed out the screen door. I backed away instinctively. He was taller than me, broad shouldered, and carried his arms in the way of weight lifters. Resentment shone on him like sweat. I didn’t know what flavor of resentment, but it didn’t take a Ph.D. to know it involved cops. I told him who I was.

“I’m investigating the kidnapping and murder of Andrew and Woodrow Yarnell. I know that happened a long time ago. But our information is that your…grandfather?…was there the night it happened.”

“He’s my grandfather. He doesn’t know anything.” His voice was low and decidedly unfriendly.

“I’d like to talk to him.”

“What if he doesn’t want to talk to you, huh? Look around, you think cops are welcome in this ’hood? They only come when they bring trouble. Like that kid who was murdered over on Buckeye yesterday. Sounds like he never had a chance. The TV said he had a gun, but you know that’s bullshit. You cops carry guns to plant on the people you shoot.”

I let that go on by. My ears were still ringing from the shooting.

“And what kind of a cop has a ride like that?” He nodded toward the BMW.

“You probably don’t know that we recovered the remains of the Yarnell twins…”

“What? Do you think I’m stupid? I read it in the newspaper.” My charm was obviously working on him. “I thought that was solved. They caught the guy way back when. He was an Anglo.”

“He might not have done it. There’s new information. That’s why I was hoping…”

His eyes bore into me and the rain sprinkled on us. “You don’t know anything about my dad. You think you’re going find some dumb old Mexican. He’s a retired small-business man. He took the money he saved while he was young, while he was working for the Yarnells, and he started a lawn service. By the time he retired, he had more than a hundred men working for him.”

As he lectured me, I could see the glow of a television screen beyond the doorway, but it was impossible to see who was inside. Then someone was watching me, a little girl with luxurious black hair and a nose pressed against the screen.

“I learned all about the police as the arm of the dominant power establishment when I was a student at Princeton,” he went on, watching me closely. “Does it surprise you a homeboy went to the Ivy League?”

“No.”

“Bullshit! I come back here and there’s no work except in real estate, and there’s a cop on my doorstep. Class and race and power, man. If this house were in Paradise Valley, you wouldn’t dare come here. You’d be dealing with some lawyer.”

“I just want to ask Mr. Paz if…”

“Hey, Pablo!” I turned to see a low-rider Honda stopped on the street. Four heads with close-cropped haircuts were staring at me. “This guy giving you trouble?”

My stomach tightened. Suddenly this seemed like a really bad idea. The little girl kept watching me.

“Look. I’m not here to hassle you or your grandfather. I saw the bones of the two little boys. It’s all that’s left. Andrew and Woodrow. They were four years old. I’ve seen a photo of them in cowboy outfits. I bet they were like any kids that age. Then somebody took them. They were sealed into a wall, and they probably suffocated in there. I don’t care whether they were rich kids or poor kids, they didn’t need to die that way. And we’ve gone for fifty-eight years without knowing what really happened. I think your grandfather could help. I can’t imagine he wouldn’t want to try.”

Pablo’s mouth turned down. Almost involuntarily he looked back into the house, at the little girl, and in a voice of unbelievable tenderness, “Go back in now. Go be with Lito. I’ll be right there.” Then he cocked his head. “It’s okay,” he called out, and gave a meaty wave to the occupants of the Honda. “We’re glad you’re back in town,” they yelled and rolled off.

“At least consider it.” I held out my card, and after a long moment Pablo took it.